No One Knows
by Del'Mareve
Summary: I once heard the most ridiculous rumor about myself. I think the rumor went something like this: Rufus Shinra has never bled or cried. Isn’t that the most idiotic thing? It just proves no one really knows a damn thing about me.


**_Author's Note:_** First off, I want to thank** _TheInvincible316, Moiranne Rose_ **and **_S Zix_** for taking the time out to read over this story and lend their honest opinions and expertise. Thank you so much.

I've had this story in mind for a long time, and after weeks of writing and editing, I finally finished it! Well, chapter one, at least. I desperately wanted to write something using a steam of conscious/first person point of view, and I wanted to do this with a character who hasn't been done to _death_. Rufus Shinra is one of my favorite characters, even though you don't see much of him in the game, so I decided to use him in my experiment. I can't really give a good summary of this story; it's about his life, I suppose, the things he's experienced to make him who he is. I've taken plenty of artistic liberties (give them to me, darn it!) but I really hope that this story will entertain, and remain as in-character as possible while adding some depth to the ex-President of Shinra. Expect angst, romance, drama, action-adventure and much, _much_ Rufus-style bitchin'.

I'd love to hear your comments! After this I won't bother to put in anymore **_Author's Notes_** (they clutter up my chapters) so until next update! Enjoy!

**..::..::..**

**No One Knows**

People always thought I was so damned lucky. That, of course, is ludicrous, but I suppose I can't blame the ignorant masses for getting the wrong impression. On the outside, I did seem sort of lucky. _Really_ lucky, in fact.

I mean, I was the son of a brilliant businessman and energy-mogul, our family was fabulously wealthy, I had everything I could ever want or need (And a few things I didn't) since I was a baby, and the Shinra name inspired both awe and fear. My family was like royalty. No, higher than royalty. Certainly more powerful than the actual royalty of that laughable, two-bit tourist trap of a country Wutai. I went to the best schools, got the best treatment, had the best opportunities. Best, best, best. Story of my damn life. I was spoiled rotten, I know, but I had the good sense to realize that I was being spoiled. I didn't let the opulence that surrounded me turn me into a spineless, moronic troglodyte (Though Tseng has often told me I'm the biggest brat he's ever seen. Honestly, what does _he_ know?).

On the outside, everything looked wonderful. On the outside, I was _so_ lucky.

What a laugh.

My family life was a huge, steaming pile of fuck, and that's putting it rather politely. Most times I wasn't allowed to leave the house (though that didn't stop me from sneaking out…oh…fifty billion times. Yeah, I was difficult). I didn't have any friends my age: real friends. I was hounded and pressured constantly. I was kidnapped once. My first kiss came from an acquaintance at the time, which would have been nice, had it not been a _male_. I was nearly molested by my therapist (sick, pedophilic bastard, also a _male_). I got caught having sex in my father's bed, not once, but twice (once again…difficult.) and my father once tried to have me committed for various ridiculous reasons.

…Those are just a few incidents.

You'd never know it to look at us. If there was one thing my family was good at (besides being utterly and completely dysfunctional), it was keeping up appearances. I was the world's most eligible bachelor at age ten. I graduated summa cum laude from every high-achieving, boring, stinking boy's preparatory school my parents ever sent me to. Dictionaries put my picture next to the definition of privileged (that may be a hyperbole, but if they _didn't_, they _should've_). I was Gaia's Little Golden Boy; look at me shine.

Under the façade, there was just a messed-up kid with a fucked-up family life and a history of abuse. I was Rufus Shinra, Golden Boy; All-eyes-on-me; rich kid, prep; know-it-all; destined-for-greatness; living legacy and all that wonderful jazz. I kept up the appearance because it the only thing I knew how to do. It was the only thing I was ever taught. I remained aloof when all I really wanted was someone I could trust. I pushed people away because I thought love only existed in the pages of fairy-tales (still do, in fact). I turned into a hardened shell because I was never taught how to properly deal with pain. I refused to connect with anyone because I was terrified of earning one more slap in the face.

Who can blame me? I grew up with some lousy examples of basic human affection. My social skills are now as limp and flaccid as…well…I won't write down the analogy I was thinking of, I'll just chuckle to myself (ha-ha). Tseng routinely accuses me of being too young to be bitter. That's just asinine. You can bitter at forty and people won't even bat an eyelash, but if you're bitter at age twenty it's all gasps and head-shaking. Bitterness is the result of having to swallow too much shit in life, and I've swallowed my fair share. I'm allowed to be bitter if I want to. By the Gods, it's my _right_.

My therapist (my new, female therapist, thank you very much) thinks that I have issues from my childhood that I haven't yet worked through. It's Tseng's fault, really. He can be worse than a nagging Junon fishwife. He insisted that I 'go see someone'. Pointless, I thought. Therapists always want to hear what you think of your own problems. No thank you. I live in the real world, and I demand real advice. But he was firm. He _insisted_. How very like him. He said that I was depressed, that everyone was worried I might hurt myself. Ludicrous. If I wanted to commit suicide I would have done so before now (gods know I had plenty of reason to) and besides that, I find suicide to be cowardly and disgraceful. My wrists are too lovely to slash.

Somehow, Tseng got me to go see a therapist, and despite my reservations, I like her. Ms. Leigh. She's very professional. Very relaxed. Sort of attractive in a school-teacher-slash-librarian way. She looks like the type who'd wreck you in the sack if you took her there. If there's one thing I had to nitpick about (I always find something to complain about; it drives Elena crazy) it's her voice. She has the most absolutely boring voice I've ever heard, like the female equivalent of a Clear Eyes commercial. Sometimes, the only way I can make it through our sessions is if I imagine her with her top off.

She actually seems interested in helping me work through my 'issues.' Ms. Leigh has me writing in a journal. She instructed me to write down every traumatic or memorable moment in my life, starting from the earliest to the latest. She told me writing is highly therapeutic, and it may help me open up about past events. She told me I'm borderline antisocial, and that it'll only get worse as I get older.

_Expert_ analysis. _Truly_ enlightening. (I'm being sarcastic, if you can't tell).

I think this journal is a waste of time, and seeing a therapist is a waste of time and money (a deadly sin in the Shinra household), but if it'll get Tseng to shut his mouth and focus on his job instead of worrying needlessly about me, it's worth taking a cursory stab at. I suppose I can write down a few key events between my board meetings.

The only thing is, when I sit down to write, my mind draws an awful blank. I can't concentrate for the life of me. When I told Ms. Leigh the problem I was having, she told me to start at the beginning. Just write whatever comes to mind, and eventually I'll find the answer. How vague of her.

The beginning.

That would have to be when my mother died.

I'll write it down after lunch.

**..::..::..**

I don't think my parents always existed within the confines of a broken marriage. They couldn't have. Once upon a time, things must have been good for them. They did get married, after all, so it stands to reason that they entered into the commitment with some semblance of love and affection. I never saw my parents happy together though.

I didn't see my parents much at all, if you want to know the truth. I was given over to the care of nannies, presumably because my parents were either too busy or too lazy or maybe just too damned ignorant to worry about caring for me on a day-to-day basis.

My father, I can sort of understand, he had a mega-corporation to tend to, but my mother was a different story. I think my mother was just an _idiot_. Thank the Gods for nannies. If she had to take care of me herself, I probably wouldn't be here. Knowing her, she would have forgotten to change me, feed me, clothe me. She would have dropped me on my goddamn head, or accidentally would have set my hair on fire with one of her stupid cigarettes while she was giving me a bath. Don't get me wrong, I loved my mother, but the woman was a _moron_, good for nothing but lavish shopping sprees and taking massive amounts of crap from my father.

My mother got all the benefits of having a child without the fuss and muss. When I was clean, in a good mood and well-feed, she would play with me for hours, just like any other mother. When I began to cry, or needed something, or smelled funny or had sticky hands, my mother would usher me off to one of the nannies. She was a society lady. My mother had her fancy dinners and bridge games and plays and what-have-you, so she was only interested in her son part-time. Such was my life.

Even though I only saw my mother once in a while, I loved her to pieces. Being with her was the highlight of my young life. I'll admit it, I was a mamma's boy. My mother was an idiot, but she was a lovely idiot. White was her favorite color. I can still remember how she looked in her long white gowns, just like it was yesterday. When she was actually _with _me, she spoiled me shamelessly. She used to keep these expensive chocolates in her purse, and make a game out of giving them to me. She read to me often, and I'm not talking about children's stories. _Novels_. Long ones, scary ones, confusing ones, exciting ones, boring ones, naughty ones (I liked the naughty ones best, of course).

We used to get into these huge tickle-fights, and since I was too small at the time to do any real damage, she always won. When she felt inclined, she would take me for long walks or drives around Midgar's Upper Plate. She was an expert pianist, and spent hours teaching me how to play on the baby-grand in our foyer. My mother never had an unkind word for me. Always, there was some treat, and warm smiles to make me feel loved and needed and wanted. Being with my mother was one of the few real instances of happiness in my life. When she died, she took all that was good for me with her.

She used to call me Eli.

Not very many people know my middle name. In fact, only _one _person knows: Reno, of the Turks. Freaking _Reno_, for god's sake. It's a long story. A long, sad, pathetic, disgusting story. Since this is a journal of all my failures, I'm sure I'll get around to transcribing it. Anyway, my middle name is Elijah.

Rufus Elijah Shinra. That's got quite the ring to it.

It was my father's idea to call me Rufus. He wanted to name me after _his _father, my grandfather, Sir Rufus Shinra, the great scientist who first discovered how to convert raw Mako into energy. My mother wanted to call me Elijah, after her father, who, as I understand it, was no one special. Obviously, my father won the name game.

If it were up to me, I would have preferred being an Elijah. Rufus doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. Rufus. Ru-fus. I've grown to like my name now that I'm older and can properly appreciate the sentiment, but I know my mother hated it. She refused to call me Rufus. To her, I was Elijah, her little Eli.

I think I was about ten years old when things started to get really bad for my parents. Fighting. Physical abuse. I still don't understand what tore their marriage apart, and since they're now both dead, I guess I never will. If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say it was infidelity on my father's part, but that could be just one of hundreds of reasons. My mother wasn't exactly a Stepford Wife. She drank, she smoke, she was lazy as hell and dumb as doorknob, but she was my _mother_. Even as a kid, I loved her more than I did my father. I never really saw him, for one. He came every once in a while to sort of…check up on me. It was nothing like a loving father-son relationship. More like he was some kind of dog breeder, and I was the prize pup he would eventually take to market. What a bastard.

I do know that things got bad. Fast. We all used to live together in Midgar, in Sector One. I don't know if you know anything about Midgar, Ms. Leigh (I'm addressing this to you because I _assume _you'll be reading all this later, and if you aren't, you are so fucking _fired _because this is a huge waste of my precious time), but Sector One is where the crème de la crème of high society lived. Midgar's Upper Plate is made up of nine Sectors, you know. They're all nice (excuse me, _were _all nice), certainly better than the dredges down in the slums, but Sector One is where you lived if you came from _old _money. Super exclusive. Sector One could have been it's own damned city, so naturally, it's where we lived. Together.

As I've written, I didn't see my parents much, and as I grew older, my nannies were replaced with 'caretakers': overpaid babysitters, basically. My caretaker at the time was a lady named Rose. Rose was a real sweet, grandmotherly type who got paid to watch over me when my folks weren't around, and that was quite often. I remember coming home one day from school to find my parents in the foyer, having a very loud argument. Well, 'argument' is a rather mild way to describe it. They weren't just shouting, they were _screaming_. It really took me by surprise, my parents being at home, I mean. I wasn't expecting them. Usually, they took off for days at a time without much notice or formal goodbyes. My caretakers always informed me when my parents would be home, so that I could be on my best behavior, I suppose. I was sort of…_demanding_, back then.

That day, Rose met me at the door after my chauffeur dropped me off at home. She was as white as a sheet, and I remember wondering what could have possibly happened to make Rose look that way. I could hear my parents screeching at each other even before I stepped in the door. My mother's voice, mostly.

I remember being sort of annoyed that they were home. I couldn't have cared less about what they were hollering about - I wanted my snack, peace and quiet to do my homework, and I wanted to take a nap and perhaps watch a little television before dinner (I was a _really _selfish kid, but perhaps no more so than other children that age). Rose ushered me into the house and tried to tug me into my room as quickly as she could, but I pulled away from her and ran into the foyer to see what the commotion was about.

I'll never forget the way my mother looked; I'd never seen her so disheveled. Her platinum-blond hair was a tangled mess, and it was obvious she'd been crying. Her mascara was running down her cheeks in long, inky lines. I remember thinking that she looked like a cheetah.

My father was far more composed than my mother, but his face was an ugly shade of red-purple, a color that always meant he was royally pissed. It was the same color he turned when was 'reprimanding' his subordinates in his office at Shinra HQ. When I burst in, they both stopped yelling and sort of stared at me, like I was some fucking stranger.

"_What _are you two doing _home_?" I asked. Real rude, real snotty. Boy, was I a handful. "You aren't supposed to be home until _Thurs_day."

"I'm sorry, I'm _so _sorry." Rose said, panicked and nervous. "I'll take the young master to his room."

"See that you do," My father said, giving poor Rose this awfully dirty look. Rose grabbed my arm, but like I said, I was a _handful_. I jerked away from her.

"I said, _what are you two doing home?_ It's _Tues_day, not _Thurs_day!" As if they needed reminding. "You're supposed to be in Costa Del Sol."

"Rose, take Rufus to his room. _Now_." My father's teeth were clenched, and he looked about two seconds away from going post-nuclear fallout.

Rose really grabbed me then, and since I was a privileged kid who had never been manhandled before and always got my way (even when I didn't particularly deserve it) I began to throw a fit. Yelling and screaming and kicking. It was all Rose could do just to keep a good hold on me.

I don't remember everything I said (I'm sure I should have been popped in the mouth for it), but my mother stepped forward and snatched me away from Rose, crushing me against her bosom like any proper mother with an upset child. It should have comforted me, but it didn't. She was filthy, stinking _drunk_. I clung to my mother for a grand total of two seconds, before I tried to squirm away in order to avoid suffocating on the whiskey fumes emanating from every pore in my mother's body. Rose seemed like a good alternative, but my mother refused to let me go. She hugged me hard enough to crush my ribs, and rested her cheek against my shoulder, getting her nasty, wet mascara all over my brand-new blazer.

"_Moom_, let _goo_-"

"Don't you _dare _touch my child!" My mother screeched up at Rose, sounding just like a crazed harpy. "Get out of my house! You're _fired_!"

"Mom, don't fire _Rose_-" I was starting to feel a little lightheaded from all the squeezing and the whiskey smell, but I honestly liked Rose: quite a lot better than I liked Ms. Connor, my other caretaker at the time. "She didn't _do _anything-"

"Good _god_ Ellen, you and your theatrics," My father said, sounding thoroughly fed up with the entire situation. "Rose, you may leave. Don't worry about my son or my wife. I'll handle them."

Rose left (I didn't see her leave, but she must have boot-scooted out of there pretty damned quick, and I don't blame her), and as soon as she was gone, my mother began screaming, right in my _ear. _

"You have no right, no _right_!" My mother said, while I wiggled like mad to get away from her. "You cheating bastard, _you don't have a son_! Rufus is MY son! Go to hell, you and your _whores_-"

"_Mooooommmmmmm _let _gooooooooo_-"

"_Shut the hell up_, Ellen. Let the boy go to his room."

"Bastard! _Cheating, lying bastard_! I'll tell everyone! _I'll fucking __**ruin **__you, you son of a bitch!_ You had a son by another _woman_-"

"_Mom_! Let me go! Let me go!!!"

My father _lost _it. He grabbed the back of my mother's shirt and yanked her backwards. I heard her gag, and I toppled as her iron grip suddenly loosened. My father dealt my mother a punishing slap across the face and she spun like a ballerina, bouncing off a wall and crashing into a small table. Then _everything _fell. My mother. The table. The glass vase _on _the table. The vase broke into a million pieces and my mother landed amidst a field of broken glass.

"I said, _shut the hell up_, Ellen." My father repeated, in a dry, bored tone.

"You hit her!" I said, shocked by what I had witnessed. By this time, I was crying. It was one of the very few times I would cry in my life. "You hit her! You hit her!"

"Go to your _room_, Rufus."

"NO! Nonononononono-"

"Don't make me tell you again."

"NO!" I jumped up, ran over to my father and began punching him in the gut, hard as I could. I was shaking, and the room had gone blurry from my tears. "You hit her! You hit her!"

My father grabbed my arm and hauled me off to my room by force, with me crying and screaming the whole way (what a real sweet family scene, don't you think?). I shouldn't have wasted so much energy. When we got to my room, my father kicked open the door and shoved me inside so hard that I tripped and hit my head on the chest I used to keep at the foot of my bed, my chest full of toys I had probably only played with once. I think I must have blacked out from the impact and the shock, because I heard father slam my door, and after that, everything faded out.

Well. My hand is getting tired from all this writing. I'll continue this wonderful little tale later.

**..::..::.. **

Now, where was I? Oh, right.

When I woke up, the house was dark and silent, and I was still on the floor, still dressed in my mascara-stained school blazer. I struggled up and immediately went to my private bathroom. I think the sight of all the blood scared me more than anything else that had happened that day. When I hit my head, I opened up a gash right at the hairline, and the disgusting, sticky, dried maroon-colored stuff clung to my face, making me look horribly mutilated.

Rude once told me that head wounds, even shallow ones, bleed a whole lot more than wounds at any other part of your body. I think he said it's because you have a concentration of blood vessels in your head (or _something _like that; to tell you the truth, I wasn't really listening when he told me). I was just a kid, however, a kid who had not the foggiest idea of lethal versus non-lethal wounds. When I saw all that blood, I honestly thought I was dying.

I almost started to cry - _almost _- but I'm not a crier. Tears are for women and the weak, if you ask me. As a child, I think my refusal to shed tears over things most children would cry about spooked adults. I once heard the most _ridiculous _rumor about myself (when you're as rich, famous and powerful as I am, rumors and tabloid magazines circle like hungry vultures). I think the rumor went something like this:

_Rufus Shinra has never bled or cried. _

Isn't that the most idiotic thing? It just proves no one really knows a damn thing about me. I cried when I saw my father slap my mother like she was worthless, and I had blood all over my face. So _there_.

I didn't cry, even though tears were stinging the corners of my eyes. All I did was turn on the faucet and splash cold water on my face. When I had rinsed away all the blood, I turned off the water, grabbed a towel, dried off and decided to go through the house until I found my mother. Not a single tear; calm and composed. Pretty good for a ten-year-old. I am made of _win_, in case you hadn't noticed.

The house was dark and sort of frightening. It's funny; I had lived in that house all my life, and yet a single event had transformed it from being _home _to looking exactly like a dungeon.

I opened my door and crept out as quietly as I could, just in case my father was lurking around the next corner. He wasn't. No one was there, which was strange. Rose usually spent the night, and we had Maurice, our personal chef, and Lily, the maid. The foyer hadn't been touched at all. Broken glass still littered the floor, along with the table. I moved past all this and went to my parent's room.

I was given free reign over most things, but my parent's room was the one part of the house where I wasn't allowed. When they weren't at home, their door was always tightly locked, but it stood slightly ajar then, and I pushed it open with a tremendous feeling of trepidation. I could hear my mother inside, singing some strange song softly to herself, in an out-of-tune warble that hardly sounded like her at all. I sprinted through my parent's room and headed for the sound of her voice, eager to see her.

She was in bathroom. In the tub. Fully clothed. The tub was filled with water that looked ice-cold. Littered around the porcelain base of the tub were what looked like hundreds of bottles of wine. Her hair was down and loose around her shoulders. Her ivory skin looked dirty; most likely from the smeared mascara. I paused in the doorway, feeling unsure, a little disgusted, and slightly terrified at the sight of my mother in this condition. She had always been so lovely.

My mother spotted me immediately (I'm not sure how she did this, because she was clearly drunk out of her mind) and smiled, a smile that was off kilter, insane and far from reassuring.

"Eli, my dear, sweet little boy…" My mother whispered, smiling and nodding.

"Mom? Mom are…you okay?" I asked, too scared to get any closer.

"Why wouldn't I be okay? I'mma top of the world. I feel _finnnnneeeeee_." Mother replied, smiling and nodding. Gods, how I wished I could wipe that horrible smile off her face. "Eli? Y…you know…mommy loves you, right? Mommy loves you, Elijah…you're mommy's angel."

I didn't respond to this.

"Your father is such a pig," My mother said suddenly, her face twisting into a drunken snarl. "He named you _Rufus_…Rufus's such a _bitch _name…"

"Mom?"

"Come over here, Baby. Let mommy…I want to give you a hug."

I didn't move. I don't think anything less than the sight of Ramuh's old, wrinkly, dress-wearing _ass _could have compelled me to move from that doorway. I don't think my mother cared either way.

"You father has another son. By some whore." Mother continued, her tone pitching wildly up and down. "His name is Lazard. Did you know this, Elijah? _Did _you? _Why do people keep things from me_?"

"Mom? Are you…are you _okay_?" I whispered again, shaking. I was ten. I was scared shitless. She was supposed to be the adult, not the other way around. What else could I possibly do?

"Yes," Mother said, suddenly sounding weary. So very tired. "Yes, Elijah, I'm fine. Just fine. Go to bed, Honey."

"Bu…but what about dinner? Maurice was supposed to be here, and there's glass on the floor…"

"Don't worry about it, honey. Just get something from the fridge and go to bed."

I paused, but eventually I did what she said, leaving my drunken mother alone in a tub full of water. My head was hurting, and I was hungry and tired and somehow I expected things to be better in the morning. In the morning, everything would go back to normal. My mother and father would make up, and they would both apologize for scaring me by buying me a golden chocobo. Rose would iron my school clothes, Maurice would make me breakfast, Lily would clean the foyer, my parents would jet off on some fancy vacation and so on and so forth.

If I had known that was the last time I would see my mother, I would have given her a hug, whiskey breath and all. Things weren't better in the morning. In fact, they were a whole lot fucking worse.

When I woke up, Mother was dead. She'd drowned.

I _told_ you she was stupid.

**..::..::..**

Ask me how I feel about this now, and I'll tell you straight: I really don't give a crap. It's something that happened, something I'd much rather forget.

I found out a lot of things after my mother died. She was an alcoholic. She was slowly becoming unbalanced. My father tried to convince her to get help, but she refused. My parents slowly grew apart, until they were living almost completely separate lives. I found that the incident at home wasn't the first time my father had struck my mother. I learned that my father carried on numerous affairs, and had a son even before he had me, a boy named Lazard Deusericus. All these things, all too late to do me any damned good.

My mother dying was the beginning, so to speak. After that, I was pretty much on my own.

I suppose I still have to write about what happened at my mother's funeral - She's the reason I wear white now - and how I moved on and my oh-so-exciting teenage years and my _almost_-molesting therapist and the time Reno kissed--------- eh.

I'll write all that later. I'm tired, and thinking about all this has given me a headache. I swear, this had better be worth my time, Ms. Leigh!

_TBC. _


End file.
